Ollie Update

Ollie’s surprise trip to the emergency room

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So, Ollie was climbing a tree at school and a piece of bark apparently flew into his eye. His teacher took him to the nurse, who flushed it with a few drops of saline. They thought he was better, so they sent him back to class, but in a little while his teacher brought him back to the nurse. Something was obviously still bothering his eye, so at that point the nurse gave us a call. Sara walked all three kids to the ER and I came home from work, got the car, and met them over there.

By the time they managed to get it all out, that poor boy had something poking his eyeball for over 5 hours. Naturally he picked up a corneal scratch somewhere along the way as well.

If you know me at all, you know that I absolutely cannot stand eye things. Evelyn and I had to face the wall while they were poking and prodding him in there (They flipped his eyelid over on a stick!! It was ghastly.), so I guess it was lucky it was Oliver, since he’s the one who likes to chase me around the house touching his eyeball just to squick me out.

The roughest part was after they finally removed whatever was in his eye and decided to rinse it with AN ENTIRE LITER OF SALINE. I mean, think of how much water is in a liter, and then imagine them dripping the entire thing DIRECTLY ONTO YOUR EYEBALL. It took a long time, and it was rough, but Ollie took it like a champ. We realized later that the reason so many people came into the room was because they had anticipated having to hold him down for it. It was that bad. But Ollie did great: it was obviously terrible, but he didn’t struggle, didn’t cry, and even joked with the nurse. He did hold my hand and sometimes shudder all over his body, but overall, he was very, very brave.

That’s Ollie for you.

Of course it was pouring rain and we got soaked to the bone running to the car (and Ollie’s umbrella turned inside out), so we were tired, wet, and freezing cold. Ollie couldn’t buckle his seat belt because his fingers were so stiff with cold. This was a rough night, man.

Afterwards Ollie chose a celebratory dinner of Five Guys and M&Ms for dessert (we denied his original request for “Valentine chocolate” for dinner and “more chocolate” for dessert).

“I don’t want to touch my eyeball anymore,” he said in a subdued voice after we finally got him into bed. So at least some good will come from all of this!

Now we have to put some kind of horrible, antibiotic eye goop in his eye 4 times a day. I watched Sara do it the first time, and it gave me the heebie jeebies just watching from across the room.

I already told her I’m waking her up in the morning to do it.

Big Brother

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Alex is fussy, so Sara is walking him up and down the hall. Ollie is doggedly marching behind her with a drum making a “heartbeat” so he can feel like he is “back in mommy’s tummy”.

Lock Saga – The Very Disappointing Conclusion

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Sorry folks, Christmas is canceled this year. 😦

If you haven’t been following along with my lock story, you only need to know two things:

  1. The only thing Ollie wants for Christmas is the combination to this lock he found, and
  2. I spent a whole lot of time figuring out the combination to his lock

Since I did ultimately find the combination to the lock, I’ve kind of been coasting to victory here, just imagining Ollie’s face on Christmas morning when he gets the combination. All the hard work, finally paying off.

Welp, it was good while it lasted.

When we first figured out the combination, we realized it must have come from the school. “Do you think we should return it?” I asked. “No,” said Sara, “it’s been missing at least two months, surely they’ve replaced it by now.” Well, they hadn’t, and they wanted it back. Sara mentioned the story to Ollie’s teacher, who informed us in no uncertain terms that the lock is the property of the school and needs to be returned by Friday.

This was obviously pretty upsetting to me. I just had this whole magical moment built up in my head, and it was really hard to watch that die. I know returning the lock is the right thing to do, and knowing that, I have no choice but to do it.

Ollie says he found the lock in the park across the street from the school. It’s not lost on me that it’s entirely possible that he took it from the school, knew he was doing the wrong thing, and lied about where he found it. He is 5 after all. And in that case, forcing him to return it is unquestionably the right thing to do (and really, returning something that someone lost is unquestionably the right thing to do in the first place).

On the other hand, it is certainly within the realm of possibility that he found it somewhere else, or forgot where he found it, or did some other thing a 5 year old might do that was not intentionally malicious. And really, if a 5 year old finds a dirty lock on the ground, even if it’s at school on the playground, it probably looks like a thing that’s okay to take (here in Chicago we find all kinds of weird things on the ground all the time).

I just wish there was a way to teach him a lesson about honesty and responsibility without sacrificing his most precious possession.

Of course I could buy him a new lock, but honestly, I don’t think he cares about locks. He doesn’t like this lock because he’s really into locks, he likes it because he found it, and it’s his. I thought instead about buying the school a new lock, and rush-shipping it so it could be here by the end of the week.

Instead, I decided to cut out his little heart so he could learn a lesson about honesty, responsibility, and never caring about anything until you are a cold, heartless, nihilist with nothing to live for and nobody to hold you down.

Sara composed the following letter and we mailed it to Ollie:

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Naturally, the mail did not arrive on time, and we had to print a second, black and white copy and slip it in with the rest of the mail.

Ollie took it about how I expected. He was VERY VERY excited to get the combination, and spent about 15 minutes just locking it on things and unlocking it. “Now it’s locked on the crate! Now it’s locked on the toilet paper!”

He is obviously reluctant to return it, but I *think* he’s going to actually do it. He seemed sort of resigned to his fate. I can’t blame him for not being excited about it, but I’m proud of him for doing it (even if it was under an implied threat from Santa).

So I think Santa may end up getting a lock for him after all. Now I just have to remember to snag the copy Santa mailed before he sees it.

We might not be completely out of the woods yet. “I’m going to try the combination on all of the locks at school and see if it works!” he said right away, and also “I’m going to tell [my friend] at school the combination!” So, uh…returning the lock may come back to bite the school a little bit.

I didn’t expect this to be so complicated.

Actual, literal, unexplained closet noises

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Oliver has a new bedroom downstairs (more on that later, when I get a chance). Evelyn has been down there for a long time, but it’s new to Ollie. I have kind of been waiting for him to say he’s scared in his new room and he doesn’t like it, but mostly he has just been so excited that I think he hasn’t had time to think about it. Certainly I wanted to have some good nights in the room to really feel comfortable in there, like he really owned the joint.

Sara and I were just finishing up a conversation about how far away the room is, and how we would never hear him if he called for us (“Eh, his sister would hear him and come get us,” I said), when I head the most terrified shrieking I’ve ever heard. With no idea how long it had been going on, I took off at a dead run. I mean, this was the kind of shrieking you do *as you are being pulled into the mouth of a monster*. It was bad enough that I felt like he needed to know I was coming, and I started yelling down the hall, “I’m coming buddy! I’m coming!”

When I got in his room he was blubbering about a noise coming from his closet. It took me a while to calm him down enough to figure out what was going on.

“There was a noise like scrrraaaatch, thump. scrrraaaatch, thump. And I called out, ‘what was that noise?’ but nobody answered. And it was going thump. thump. So I kept saying it louder and louder, but nobody was coming!”

(Side note: his sister apparently slept through all of this…so much for her coming to get us if he needed us at night.)

I said, “I don’t hear any noises.” “Turn off the lights,” he said. “You’ll hear it.”

I laid down in the bed with him, and honest to god there was a scrrraaaatch, thump. from the closet. All of the hairs on the back of my neck went up. I mean, by this point the light was on and the closet was open, so obviously there wasn’t anything in there, but it was a TERRIFYING noise.

You should have seen the look on his face. His eyes were as big as saucers. I mean, he knew what he heard, but I guess noises from the closet are just not something that happens when your daddy is around. His face said, “I dare you to deny you just heard that.” I have to admit, my face *probably* looked like his.

I got up and I looked all around, but I could not figure out what the noise was. I didn’t see anything out the window. It was coming from the ceiling of his closet, but our kitchen is above there, and I knew there wasn’t anybody up there.

It was a little difficult to calm him down when I didn’t know what the heck was going on. My best guess is that someone was getting something out of the outside storage area (and then, naturally, ran away quickly and shut off the light before I went out there to check). Makes total sense.

So, yeah. Unexplained, creepy closet noises in Ollie’s new bedroom. Fantastic. Anybody hear any creepy noises back when that was just the guest bedroom?

Ollie’s First Letter

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Ollie wrote a letter to me tonight:

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He’s toyed around with writing a word here or there, but this is by far the longest thing he’s written. It says (bottom to top, of course):

Dad, I love you today. We had a big fight yesterday. A. I will give a kiss or a hug XXOO.
Ya Ya.
Glug Glug, I eat ants for breakfast right off the rug.